PSX Extreme

Site Stats

A Final Fantasy VI Remake Was Once A Reality

Ben is away so I hope nobody minds if I play around a little in his absence. :)

Let's kick the weekend off a little early with some Final Fantasy nostalgia. With the server problems for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn causing some snafus, impatience for a release date on the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD entries, and some nervousness surrounding Lightning Returns I think the fans could use some cheering up.

Maybe I'm alone but interesting history always cheers me up. The hardcore may already know about this but somehow it escaped even me until a few days ago. What is this? It's a demo disc from Square Enix's previous, arguably better iteration, Squaresoft from way back in 1995 at the SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) conference.

Titled Square’s Preview Extra: Final Fantasy VII & Siggraph ’95 Works, the demo was only available in Japan and so escaped a lot of western eyes. It features a playable demo of Final Fantasy VII, which interestingly enough has Aeris/Aerith as a member of your party at the very beginning, and a CG movie for a 3D version of Final Fantasy VI. It shows Locke, Tara, and Shadow battling a stone golem and even enlisting the power of a Bahamut summon.

Final Fantasy VI was a pretty huge game though, and it might not have been a full remake. At the end credits the title reads Final Fantasy VI: The Interactive CG Game. Now that would have been an interesting piece of software had it come to fruition.

Final Fantasy VI is a fantastic game and I still want S-E to continue with the 3D remakes with V & VI on the 3DS. If that ever happens I will buy that and the console day with it upon release.

I presume this tech-demo is built with the N64 in mind, everything has a more bulky look like the N64 did have back then.

There was also a Tech-Demo for the Playstation 2 featuring a recreating of the Dance scene in PS2 graphics. I remember people claiming Final Fantasy VIII was going to be remade - Not as bad as how the VII tech-demo still has fans begging for an FFVII remake...

But yes, I think a 3DS version of VI would be really ideal, I don't think they could replicate the experience in full HD Realistic graphics. But having the game look like III or IV on the DS - But more enhanced would be really superb.Last edited by Vivi_Gamer on 9/6/2013 10:54:08 AM

I am tired of what remakes could have been. VI remains my favourite but I don't want any more remakes. Just improve the next ff title. It is disheartening tbh, when there was talk of vii being remade I was excited! We got x which I absolutely loved but let's stop stifling se and let them try new things with the franchise.

Ah, I believe I can shed some light on this. That demo movie (which I did not know was ever released on a disc) was a tech demo from Square showing off what they would hypothetically be able to do graphically for Final Fantasy VII. If memory serves, that demo came out before Square decamped to PlayStation -- up to that point, everyone assumed Final Fantasy VII would be an N64 game!

Square, I believe, never intended for that demo to signify a full-on, 3D FF VI remake. And that episode is instructive on the whole FF VII remake fiasco. Square, which had now become Square Enix, wanted to show a quick demo demonstrating the sort of graphical capabilities we'd all enjoy with PlayStation 3 Final Fantasy games -- just as they had two generations earlier with the FF VI demo! Gamers collectively lost their minds at the thought of that FF VII remake that never was, but like that VI demo of 10 years earlier, it is very likely Square never really intended to fully remake the game.

The FF VII demo was too good. They clearly had no idea how crazy everyone would get when they showed it. But then SE took a look actually evaluated how much it would cost to do a proper, full-on remake. And then they got stuck in the awful FF XIII mess that they have yet to extricate themselves from. And, well, here we are.

I STILL maintain there's just no way SE won't eventually do a remake. And when they do, the vast majority of us are going to be so disappointed we'll wish they had never made that stupid demo in the first place -- just as you suggest :)

Im not 100% sure, but i think that was FF7 on the nintendo 64 until Soft played with the PSX and remade the entire thing into the current FF7 we know and love. I dont love it, but its not a bad game. My main issue is the D-pad. Ugh...

Look, you guys can speculate all you want, SE showed the FF7 demo as a tantaliser. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing and exactly how nutz everybody would go when they showed it. With FF13 looming ahead and them originally going with FF13 as a 360 exclusive, they knew they would need something huuuuuge to win back the PS fans that they stabbed in the back. They then strategicly moved FF13 to multiplat but knew there was a chance it would fail. So SE denied, denied, denied, anything about a FF7 remake. While the whole time secretly working on FF7 redeaux. Than, after the flop, of both FF13/13-2, all of a sudden they announce it.

FFXIII was *never* a 360 exclusive. Where on earth did you get *that* information. It was designed on the PS3, hence why it's a better version. The 360 version was an ported after-thought, to "appeal more to the Western market". The drawdistance had to be lowered, the texture resolution was dropped.

Nobody was stabbed in the back. No one. You're making that up.

And I find it hilarious that you guys are calling FFXIII a flop.. Considering it sold extremely well. FFXIII & FFXIII-2 sold about.. 9 million copies total? Beats Mass Effect 1 & 2 *combined*. They were also reviewed *rather positively*. It's only the fanboys who got all hateful and bitter about it.

Please, for the love of all things holy, get your facts straight before you make such insane accusations..

And yes, I DID just create an account to say that. Oh fanboys.. When will you get it right..?

Anyway, the FFVI thing? Yeah, that was merely concept for planned N64 version of FFVII, before Square jumped ship to Sony.

Which is hilarious, because FFVII fanboys seem to forget that it was pretty widely despised *because* it was on PlayStation and in 3D. It wasn't Nintendo, therefore it was bad. Funny how those rose-tinted nostalgia glasses really mess people's judgement up.Last edited by MattA24 on 9/11/2013 3:19:40 AM